


on other shores

by AvaRosier



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Continuum (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-27
Updated: 2013-10-27
Packaged: 2017-12-30 15:16:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1020230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AvaRosier/pseuds/AvaRosier
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A little Headcanon I had for Skye, a crossover between Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Continuum, which is of course already Jossed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	on other shores

"I hope you find what you’re looking for," Miles tells her, right before she goes to face Coulson’s judgement. He doesn’t know the truth, just enough.

Ward won’t come with her, and that cuts Skye deeper than she expected. It’s not so easy to keep on telling herself that she’s separate from them. But, she has been taught to always keep the bigger picture in sight.

Coulson demands that she tell him what she’s been hiding all this time. He put a lot on the line for her, she understands that now. And she’s seen enough to believe that Phil Coulson is truly a good man. Out of all the people on this plane, she would actually trust him the most. 

But… the thing is, what she is hiding is too enormous…and it’s not just her secret on the line. Not when she’s not sure that she can trust S.H.I.E.L.D. People can be good, but they can easily be lost in the cogs of an institution. And Skye knows all to well what evils institutions can wreak.

She doesn’t pull the chip from her bra. She just opens her mouth, shakes her head, and closes it. “I can’t,” she whispers.  _I’m sorry, I just can’t_.

That was her last chance with him, and she knows it. Coulson looks so absolutely disappointed. The tears are fat and hot, rolling down her cheeks as he storms out of the area. 

This is what the Rising Tide means:  _A pebble tossed from a beach can become a tsunami on the other side of the world. You are that pebble and I’m standing on a beach on the other side of time, waiting for the tidal wave to crash._

Kagame and Liber8 want to change the world through total destruction; terrorism. There are other ways, other paths.

She picked the name Skye, for the Isle of Skye, where her mother’s parents had come from. There is nothing special about her name itself; it holds no power. It is a name that has yet to be born. 

Tiernan MacKinnon Lee. Her parents had called her Tia.  _No, they had called her Ducky._

Sometimes, in the safe, enclosed space of her van, or even in her cubicle on the plane, Skye would pound her fists against her thighs and try to make sense of it all.

She should have been home by then, that day. But she had wanted to go out with her friends. A small, selfish choice, and it had a hurricane-like effect on her entire life. A butterfly beats its wings… or so they say.

As long as she lives she will always remember the trembling that vibrated up through the ground and into her bones. The deep, sustained rumble of enormous buildings plunging to the ground. The dust that had coated everything. The unbearable silence.

Everything had been taken away from her that day. Sixty-four years in the future, she will be fourteen years old, and utterly alone.

Skye pounds her fists against her thighs and feels the solidity of her flesh, her muscles, her skeleton, and tries to understand where they went. She tries to understand how her parents, and all those thousands of people, and all those furniture and all those wedding rings and all those dinner plates…she tries to understand how they were ground down into dust and silence.

She can’t care about ideology. She can’t say that mass murder is a necessary means justified by an unpredictable end. What she is, deep down, is a selfish little girl with the taste of vengeance on her tongue.

Her chance came, years later. Alec Sadler wasn’t the only one with his hands on temporal technology. Skye thinks that, in a way, he has betrayed them all…he invented the technology that had become such a cornerstone of their intensely controlled society. And then he sends the terrorists, the murderers back in time where they have a terrible advantage.

This is what the Rising Tide means:  _The people don’t realize how tight the noose is around their neck. If you expose the corporations’ secrets, if you give them a chance to fight…_

A butterfly beats its wings and causes a hurricane on the other side of the world.  

Skye isn’t about to trust two old men playing God.

Coulson leaves the area and she takes a pen and some paper and writes him a note; the only explanation she can afford.

_I won’t cause you trouble anymore. What I wanted was too selfish. I can’t promise you that the Rising Tide are good people, or that their aims fall in line with S.H.I.E.L.D’s._

_I’m sorry._

_But thank you,_

_Tia_

Nobody thinks to stop her, to lock her in a room. She leaves the same way Miles had less than a hour ago. She has no name in this world, she knows how to disappear.

A part of her wants so desperately to stay with them, to become their friends, to save people with them. It feels so good, like sunshine on her face after so long in the darkness. But, she is a selfish little girl with the taste of vengeance on her tongue.

Except now, all she can taste is salt.


End file.
